Tyler makes a line through one of his 'time' things.

Nothing seems to happen to it.

And if he scribbles over the letters? Or goes and grabs a black sharpie and colours over the lines?

Nothing continues to happen to it.

"Defacing seems to do nothing visible, though whether it'll still work is… not really obvious from just this."

"Did you have a spell in mind to test with it?"

"Not with time, so it would probably have been a better idea to deface one of the wind ones. Not that it probably matters much either way."

"Okay, so, test one of the wind ones to make sure stuff's still working usually," says Theo, grabbing one and then saying the shortest phrase.

Yep, working.

Tyler grabs one, draws a line through it with pen, then tries the shortest phrase on it.

Does not work.

What about one where he joins up the line and the tittle (the dot) of the 'i'?

No banana.

And if he circles 'wind' on one of the pieces of paper?

Just circling it doesn't seem to present a problem.

Okay, well, he'll cancel the spell and then– actually, he'll cancel it and then see if he can start it back up just by willing it to continue or if it actually totally stops it.

If this fails, next time he'll try 'pausing'.

Totally stops it, and apparently there's no such thing as pausing either.

Huh. He mentions this to Maya and then tries various other methods of defacement. Since 'line through with pen' broke it, as did 'join the dots', he'll try doing a mark between two of the lines of the 'w', which shouldn't actually affect the word itself.

Theo is willing to just be quiet and watch Tyler be kinda excited by stuff.

He's been all moody all this time and now he's actually getting involved.

The mark makes the paper stop working.

And Sadde wants to see how long it takes her to run out of mana so she'll start doing small spells while Tyler tests that.

What about a mark slightly above the 'w', instead of between two of the lines of it?

That one's alright.

… What about very slightly below that previous thing, on another piece of paper, so that it's just about on the same level as the top of the 'w'?

Does it touch the 'w'?

No, it's between the first two upper points on the 'w'. If the first 'v' shape were a triangle, it would just about be on the upper line.